-1Fred's mouth hung open in shock. Finally, he recovered enough to say, "So Lavender Brown is really your cousin, Livvy?" Hermione nodded sadly. "You can never tell anyone this, Fred. You must promise me." She met his eyes and there was a look in them that Fred had never seen before. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but it scared him. "I promise. I will tell no one, not even George." Hermione smiled slightly. "George you may tell, if you wish, but you must be sure he will never tell anyone, and that includes you other brothers. The only people that know about this are Harry and Ron." Fred nodded to show his understanding.
"I have to ask you something," he said quietly. "Why are you telling me all this?" Hermione hesitated before answering him. "I'm telling you for a lot of reasons. First, and most importantly, Fred, I am telling you this because I trust. However much you may have gotten on nerves over the years," she said with a smirk, "I know that I can count on you. Secondly, I am telling you because it is time that you knew. I was planning to tell your whole family over Christmas break anyway, so that there is a place outside of my home where I truly belong, with people who I can trust and who trsut me, and who know me completely. And lastly, I'm telling you this because I have reason to believe that Livvy-and I-may both be in danger."
"After all these years of being safe at Hogwarts, how can you possibly be in danger again?" Fred was surprised at how much this scared him. He had loved Hermione and Harry for a long time, practically since they had become friends with Ron, but he sensed that his fear for Hermione was quite different than anything he had felt when he knew the threesome were in danger before.
"My parents sent me a letter. It said that two strangers had come by, posing as door-to-door salesmen. They had been polite but very insistent on coming in, and spent the whole time looking around them. They even asked my parents where their children were." Hermione swallowed a faint laugh as she told Fred the last part, though really it was the biggest clue that the two were not salesmen, but rather wizards. "They were also tipped off by the fact that both were wearing kilts and blouses, in January, with matching heels."
This caused Fred quite a shock. He laughed with her at the hilarious image, but the laughter was short-lived. "How does all this make you believe that everything will turn out all right?" he said finally. "It seems to me that you would be the person with the most reason to have no faith in anything."
Hermione shrugged. "I guess that when I look at my life now, I realize that anything is possible. Look at all that I and my family went through, and at all that Harry has gone through, and here we are, at Hogwarts, with friends we can trust with our lives. No matter what happened in the past, no matter how much danger we are in now, we will always have each other." She met his eyes, and this time he could name the emotion that he saw. Seriousness and love. "That includes you, Fred," she said quietly.
They sat on the couch in a comfortable silence. Hermione rested her head lightly on Fred's shoulder and he wrapped a protective arm around her. They sat there for almost an hour in complete silence, simply enjoying the fire and the comfort of each other's company.
When Fred finally turned to look at her, she was sound asleep. He dropped a kiss on her head and tucked her a little closer. He tried to tell himself that he was just trying to make her feel safe, that after the story she had told him he felt that she needed a little extra protection. But he knew he was just lying to himself.